Favor
by Havoc
Summary: On a trip to Port Royal, Jack asks will to do him a little favor. NEW! Chapter 3 up! Jack does Will a favor.
1. A Favor for Jack

Will stared at the little house and thought back to the conversation that had gotten him into this mess in the first place.

"_It's just a little favor, in't it, mate? Jack had pleaded the last time he had docked the Pearl at Port Royal and come to the smithy for visit. The house's not a days ride from Port Royal and you'd be doing me a kind turn. I'd owe you, as it were."_

_Will looked doubtfully at Jack and weighed the heavy bag of pieces of eight that the older man had handed him. "Don't you usually spend your treasure, Jack?"_

"_Not all, Jack protested, sounding hurt. Anys I has to spare, I always be sending it to Birdie. Only see, I'm in a great rush this very time and can't be going so far from my ship."_

_Will debated this in his mind. Surely Jack was up to something, but probably nothing so very bad. There was nothing in their past together that might encourage Jack to have Will ambushed by cutthroats, say, or arrested by the King's men. "You'd owe me?"_

"_More than I could hope to repay," said Jack in a relieved tone of voice. "Well, then, I hear a tankard or three of rum calling my name, now, Will, if it's all the same to you. Kiss Elizabeth right well for me, won't you, and I'll be off."_

_And with those words, Jack had gone out the door and vanished into the night before Will could rethink his answer._

So here Will stood in front of a small house, one of a line of them in this nameless town, with a well-tended garden and a goat and three chickens in the yard, wondering how he came to be here. Taking a deep breath, he stepped up to the door and knocked hard.

A big man, bald and bearded, with a peg leg, came to the door in answer to his knock. The man towered over Will as he stood in the door and said nothing of welcome. After a silence, during which Will screwed his courage to the sticking point, he managed to say, "Jack sent me? With a gift for Birdie?"

Silently, the man stood aside and let Will step in the door. The house was dark inside, and close, but it was tidy and showed a careful hand in it's decoration. Wide windows let in light on a pretty sitting room, and there were two doors leading off other ways.

A young woman, a far cry from twenty if Will had to bet, came through the right hand door, asking, "Whistler, did-," she stopped when she saw Will, and changed the end of her sentence. "Aye, I see I did hear the door. Who be you, stranger?"

"Will Turner, miss, from Port Royal. Jack sent me to you, if you are Birdie."

The man, Whistler Will took him to be, nodded silently at the woman and left the room without saying a single word. The woman, she laughed, not a happy sound, and responded. "Aye, Birdie Sparrow, that's my name. And my husband sent you to me then, and has once again not brought his bonny self home to me?"

Husband? He judged her to be of barely an age to start her courting. "You're Jack's bride then?" he hazarded, trying to figure out when on that last trip to Port Royal, between imprisonments and escapes, Jack had found time to wed.

Another laugh, no more happy than the first. "Bride says that Jack and I are but newly wed. Tis not the case. We've been husband and wife these last eight years."

"Eight... But you must have been a child!" he protested.

"Aye, and I willing one at that, seeing as me only other choice was to be sold to the brothel. Raised there, I was, me mother a whore. Only me mum had it in her mind I was one too many mouths to feed, don'tcha you know, with her earning her coin on her back and she not getting any younger. But Captain Jack, he took exception to me whoring before I even had me teats, and so he told me mum, if I must have a man, let it be him, and married me soon as the banns been cried."

"So... it's a legal marriage then?"

"Legal as they come in Port Royal. Said I deserved the protection of his name and it a fearsome one then. But he left, don'tcha know, and not been back but thrice these eight years, and thinking me but a child each time. Wager he's scared, I do."

Will looked again at the unlikely Mrs. Sparrow, small-boned, with a sharp, narrow face, but with a strange uncanny beauty well beyond her youth. Yes, he too wagered that Jack was scared. Or at least he ought to be, if he knew what was good for him.

A cry from the back room then, and Birdie excused herself a moment, came back with a babe in swaddling clothes. "Baby woke," she explained unnecessary.

"Jack's a child?" said Will. Was there no end to the surprises this favor' for Jack would bring?

"Not hardly," Birdie retorted. "Jack married me when I was but eight and I'm as virgin now as I was then, seeing as he comes to be here so rarely. No, neighbor woman died birthing him, and her husband too grieved to raise the child. So I took the boy to raise and named him Jack Junior, a small joke on my part. Miss saying me husband's name, I do and now I's the chance." She looked sad as she spoke, and comforted the boy by bouncing him a bit. For a time, silence reigned in room. Birdie seemed to be studying Will, her eyes keen and bright by the window's light. She was a pretty enough lass, Will judged, though she didn't hold a candle to his own beloved Elizabeth.

After a bit, Birdie spoke again, all the laughter in her voice gone, so that there was nothing but sadness. "Are you very good friends with my husband, then, Mr. Turner?"

"I like to fancy myself so," he responded, curious, cautious.

"Tell him something then, for me." At his wary nod, she continued. "I'm a fair woman, I am, and as much in love with my husband as I can be, without knowing him, and the right of my marriage bed goes to my dear Jack. But tell him, do you, that I grow weary of the wait and will be patient for only another year longer. For here I am a mother now, and I've never known the pleasure of a woman. The next handsome man Jack sends me instead of his ownself, that'll be the man I give myself to."

She eyed Will then, a woman's look and not a bit the child, and he felt himself flush. She was a pretty girl, she was. No, he loved Elizabeth and to think on Jack's child bride was surely the way to a quick end. Nervously, he thrust out the bag of gold at her, hoping to change the tone of conversation. No virgin should look at a man the way she did. "Here, ma'am, Jack's gift to you. And I'll be off then, to my own wife."

"You make her a woman already?" Birdie asked, sounding of honest curiosity. "On her wedding night or was she an eager lass and let you anticipate?"

"Ma'am," he protested, shocked. Old beyond her years, this one was and curious as a cat to boot. She sighed, rebuked, and leaned back, the better to coo at baby Jack. "I've best be off," Will repeated, and turned back to the door. As he reached it, Birdie called out again.

"You'll give him my message, then, Mr. Turner? You'll tell Jack his wife grows lonely for his company?"

"Aye, lady, if only for fear you will find me if I don't," he answered back, closing the door hurriedly behind him. As he walked to his horse, he spoke aloud, as if Jack was there to hear him. "It's a very large favor you'll be owing me now, Captain Jack."


	2. A Favor for Birdie

"Congratulations," said Will to Jack as they shared a bottle of rum in the captain's quarters of the Pearl. "You're a father."

It was worth the wait of saying the words, Will thought, as Jack managed to both spit out his mouthful of rum and choke on it at the same time. "What'd ye say?" he managed to gasp out between coughs.

"Birdie's a mother," said Will helpfully, barely concealing a laugh at Jack's look of appalled horror. For a breath, he pondered leaving it that, letting it eat at Jack, wondering where his virgin bride had come to have a baby of her very own. It was a pleasing thought, catching Jack at his own game, and one that Will was having a hard time giving up on. Then he recalled the look on Birdie's sharp little face and he thought better of the plan; she looked well able to exact her own revenge on Will, if she found out he did not pass on his message as promised. A shudder at the thought, and he choose honesty. "Breath, man. She hasn't put the horns on you. Your wife is raising her neighbor's boy, named him Jack after you."

Snarling at Will, Jack dragged his hand across his mouth, wiping the rum away. "Was that supposed to be funny?" he demanded.

Will shrugged, "'Bout as humorous as you forgetting to tell me that minor detail of Birdie being your wife."

"And is that any business of yours?" Jack shot back, as he poured out two more mugs of rum.

Will stayed quiet, trying out answers in his mind, sensing he needed to be careful with his words here.

When he had come to the Pearl, hidden as it always was in a secluded cove, he had come thinking Jack's marriage to Birdie was in line with a joke, something Jack had done on a whim to repent later. The sorrow in his voice made Will rethink that. What ever was between Jack and the child he married, it was no joke. Jack was more in earnest now than Will had ever seen him. "She misses you," he said finally.

Jack slumped with either the weight of the words or the rum. "Aye," he agreed heavily. "Knew she would. No help for it. She's a good girl, Birdie is."

Will couldn't let it go any longer. "Why'd you marry her, Jack? What were you thinking?"

"Drunk," brazened Jack, clearly lying.

"You had the banns cried," Will reminded him. "Were you drunk for the whole time?"

"For a long time, anyway." Jack met Will's eyes, dared him to ask more. Once upon a time, Will would have left it at that, a younger Will, one more in awe of the pirate captain than the Will sitting before Jack now.

"Jack, for once in your lying life, be honest. You married the girl, and its clear you have some affection for her."

"Course I married her. Had to, didn't I? She was my perfect match. My, what'd you call it? Soul mate. Only problem was that she was just a mite too young for the likes of me. You had to know her then," Jack paused, took a deep drink of rum. Fortification, Will figured. "Had to see her, for you to understand. She was this fey thing, wild. Never saw any creature like her, and there I thought I'd seen all the world had to offer." His voice drifted off and his eyes grew hazy with memory.

Jack stirred, looked past Will when he spoke. "T'aint right, man my age and a girl of her tender years. Was gonna wait, I was, for the opportune moment, as it were. But she was wild for me, couldn't wait," he concluded with bravado and Will just sighed.

"Jack, I met the girl. I know you haven't laid so much as a finger on her. Would you just tell me the truth? Tell me," Will suggested, thinking maybe it might do the man good to talk about what was clearly eating at his insides.

For a long time, Jack only sat and drank, and Will was sure that Jack would refuse to answer him. When he finally spoke, Will was actually startled. Jack spoke in his usual rolling way, his words hypnotic, as they always were.

"Birdie ain't her right name. Don't know fer sure she had one, her mum called her Girlie and so did all who knew her. T'was me called her Birdie, for her bones, all fine and sharp under her skin, and her so small, she looked like she could fly. A man'd see her at the shore, playing in the water, searching for shells, all dirty and ragged, but you could see in her face that she might be beautiful some day, if she got the chance to grow some. She was a scavenger, that girl, and right smart. You's tell her yer name, see, cause she'd ask and she was a charming mite, and next time she she saw you, she'd come running up, calling your name for all to hear. Nere forgot a thing, that girl."

"How long have you known her?"

"She must've been, I dunno, maybe five or six when I first made her acquaintance, as it were. Came to Port Royal running ahead of a storm, and it was all dark and the wind was blowing like the end of the world, and as I came off me ship, there she stood, on the dock, watching the storm ride. Craziest thing I ever did see, this girl, not even up to my waist, and she's standing there all alone and the wind is blowing like enough to throw her in the sea, and she's laughing. So I grabbed her up, din I, just to keep her safe, and asked her where it was she belonged and you can imagine my shock when she says, in her baby lisp, the name of the filthiest whore house in all the town. So I took her there, and the madam, she knew Birdie, by sight she did, so I guess it was where she belonged, but it struck me wrong. Made a point of visiting her after that, to see she was a'right."

Will heard in Jack's voice what the pirate hadn't said yet, so he asked the question, just to make him say it. "When did you fall in love with her?"

Jack met his eyes, no emotion on his face. "When I met her, a course. When'd ye think I did?"

"She was a baby!" Will had made himself a promise that he would listen to what Jack had to say and not be shocked, but that young!

Jack read right whatever he saw in Will's face and moved to argue his case. "T'weren't her body I craved, t'was her spirit. There she was, not even enough years to her name for her to count em on two hands, and she was standing in the wind and rain like she was born to them, and laughing, laughing like a mad creature. Knew then that she would grow up as wild and as fierce a woman as a man could hope to have, s'long as nobody broke her long the way. So I watched her grow, visited the whorehouse where her mum sold 'erself, and was all content to wait till she was a right age for me to make my attentions known. Not a soul on that shady street what didn't know she was mine to protect. But her mum forced me hand, she did. I came back one day and Birdie was sitting on the dock, crying. Ain't never saw Birdie cry fore then. First time she ever seemed the child. Told me what her mum had planned, bout selling her to the whorehouse, for those men what don't have my fine sensibilities and see something in a child's body that makes them hard for her. Had no choice, then. Did I?" Jack's voice was stark and bleak. It was clear to Will that some part of Jack hated himself for taking a child to wed. That he would have wed Birdie eventually was clear for Will heard in Jack's voice the same tone he heard in his own when speaking of his dear Elizabeth. Lovesick and more, lost and happily to Birdie's magic, but still Jack had married long before he meant to and was sick with it.

"You had no choice," Will soothed, because there was nothing else he could say. Birdie had been right when she said Jack's name gave her a measure of protection she would otherwise not have. And he had done as right by her as was possible, given a limited number of choices.

Jack kept talking and Will could tell this had been eating at him for a long time, this marriage no one knew of, for he talked to Will now like man making his confession to God and all His priests. "Brought her a little house, somewhere safe, gave her Whistler, who had lost his taste for the sea after losing 'is leg. Gave her all I could, though none of it was what I meant to. So I stay away now, keep my distance, so that she don't think I'm one of those men having an unhealthy lust for children. Not the life I wanted with her. Was gonna court her right proper and marry her when she was of an age for it. S'all ruined now and I don't know any way that I can make things clean again."

"She misses you, the idea of you, the reality of you. You saved her and she loves you as much as she's able, but she wants a man of flesh and blood to love, and not a name she remembers. Go home to your wife, Jack. She's a woman grown now and wants a man to love. She said to tell you..." here Will hesitated, not sure if these words were ones that Jack could hear, then deciding he needed the truth, if only as a goad to do what he wanted, which was go to the home he had barely seen and make Birdie his wife in truth as well as name. Taking a deep breath, he repeated Birdie's message and watched Jack's face go all closed and cold.

His face he could do, but Jack couldn't quite keep the pain from his voice. "She's a child."

"She's not. Maybe when you saw her last, she was. But I saw her this morning and she's a woman. Sixteen. They marry younger than that here, and you know that as well as I. If things had gone the way you wanted, you'd be courting her even now, you know it's true."

"I'm old enough to be your da, never mind her own," Jack pointed out.

"She's grown. Ready and waiting for you."

Sparrow looked out the window, looking older than he had any wont to. "How long did she say she'd wait?"

"Man, don't be a fool! You're docked here, she's waiting in that little house you brought her, and she's not a bad looker, for a sharp little girl."

Jack smiled then, that smile that had gotten them in more trouble than Will cared to think about, and then the other man swung up out of his chair. Grabbing the rum, he finished the last of it and punched a friendly fist into Will's shoulder. "Mayhap you're right, at that, Will me boy."

"Thought you were in a hurry," Will called after him.

"Don't I seem to be?"


	3. A Favor for Will

Quite a lot of Will wished he could be a fly on the wall when Jack went to the home to his baby bride. However, wisely figuring that would earn him another round of Jack's dirtiest fighting, he decided to stay out of it. He contented himself with trying to imagine how that meaning would go.

_Jack stood outside the little house, which, he could tell, was completely empty. He took two steps back and thought about throwing stones at the window. His wife was supposed to be here, his wife and the man he set to guard her all those years ago. Where were they?_

_A door across the way opened and he turned to see a blowsy woman lean out and call, "If yer looking for Miss Bridie what lives there, she goes to market every morning. She's a slow one, likes to look. Ye'll be waiting some."_

"_It's Mrs. Birdie," he yelled back, aggrieved. "Mrs. Birdie Sparrow," he added, in the same tone of voice he always said, "Captain, Captain Jack Sparrow."_

_The woman blew out half a laugh, "Birdie ain't got no man 'cept that Whistler, and he's a father to her. Well, and that boy, Li'l Jackie, but he's from her own kind heart and not her belly." The woman clucked her tongue at him and goes back inside her house, shutting the door loudly behind her as she did._

"_No man she says," Jack grumbled under his breath. "Birdie's got a man. She's got me, don't she? Birdie's always had a man."_

_Frustrated with how badly this was already going, before he had even laid eyes on his woman again, he managed a casual saunter over to sit on the stoop of his Birdie's house to wait on her. He never thought of her doing simple things, things like going to market and taking the baby out. He never thought of him waiting on her._

_The shadows had moved five inches before Birdie and Whistler come back. Birdie was like Will said, all sharp bones and glittering eyes and she was every inch as eye-catching as Jack thought she would be. Those fine and beautiful bones were shown to excellent advantage by sun-touched skin and no-color hair. _

_She was shorter than he had expected she would be and that's a shock. Shouldn't that all that spirit have stretched her some? But her eyes were his Birdie's eyes, wild as a storm rolling over the seas and he figured he was right all those years ago, when he decided she was the one for him, so he came to his feet in a smooth sweep of motion and bowed to her, whisking his hat off in a gallant's gesture as he did so. "Hullo, Birdie. Heard you were looking fer me."_

_Birdie and Whistler stopped dead in their tracks. "Cap'n Jack?" Birdie breathed and that wasn't like her but he took a look again and saw that the beautiful wild child he remembered was now actually hidden under a mother. She had a baby all wrapped up in swaddling clothes in her arms and he wondered how he could've been looking at her so long and only just now see the child. "That yer other Jack?" he asked, feeling the fool._

"_S'my Jackie," she said with pride but he saw that she looked awkward around him now, scared and shy and he hated it. When she was a little girl, she would come running up to him like she owned him, would wrap her bony little baby arms around his legs and crow in joy when she saw him. This Birdie, this grown woman with the babe in her arms, she wasn't going to dropping that boy anytime soon to wrap her arms around her husband. Maybe he oughtn't have stayed away so long._

" _He'll be a year ina few weeks," she added a minute or so later, when the silence had grown too long. She was looking at her son's face and not at him and he wished again she would be the girl he had known and not this strange woman._

"_I 'ave been away too long, ain't I?" Jack asked and he took a careful step towards her, chary, like she might break if he moved too fast or too rough. He had never thought of Birdie as fragile afore this._

_Whistler watched them for a moment and, after a long stare that Jack had no trouble as reading that Whistler had transferred all his formidable loyalty to Birdie as the years passed, he took the baby along with the shopping and headed inside Birdie's little house. Jack waited for the door to slam shut before he spook again. He was glad enough for Whistler to be in the house for this conversation, wishing none of these words to be heard by Whistler's sharp ears. Alone now, Birdie leaned against the door frame and studied the ground intently for a moment before meeting his eyes again. He was relieved to see the sudden flash of temper and passion in her eyes. He thought she might want to beat him, but at least it was the fire he had seen in her all those years ago._

"_An' there she is," Jack slurred happily, not drunk but willing to act it if it got Birdie to ease up and become more the girl he had left behind. "There's my Birdie girl. Ye are a sight for sore eyes, aren't ya? You grew up beautiful as I thought ye would."_

_He was hampered by the sudden fear that he really was too old for her. This here in front of him was a blooming young lady, ripe as they came and he was well past his prime, weathered by a life on the sea. Young Miss Turner had turned interested eyes on him only when her pretty boy was nowhere near and she had a good three years on his wife._

_Birdie looked at him balefully and took a threatening step forward and there was all the fire he loved, burning bright in her. "I'll give ye a sore sight, I will," she said, pulling an arm back in a fist._

"_Whoa now, there's my Birdie back again," Jack laughed, feeling younger by the moment, and stepped quick as he could to the side to grab her fist before it could punch him in the nose. Taught her right at least, he had. His Birdie didn't slap a man that did her wrong; she punched and punched hard. He had taught her that himself. "Don't you feel the smallest bit happy to see me?"_

_A cynical little sneer curled her lips, a witch's look, and something in Jack went all topsy turvy, better than the rum, because this was his Birdie, Birdie with the sharp edge he had seen in her even when she was a child._

_Birdie was snarling at him, mad as a snake kicked out from under a rock. "Happy to see ye? Well now, my fine handsome captain, that would depend all on the answers you give me."_

"_There's a test now, is there?" Jack laughed some then, until he could tell from the fire in Birdie's eyes that she was thinking again about punching him. Then he spoke, trying to sooth her as best he could. "Birdie, love, maybe now's the time I should be telling ye that I'm a cheat, a liar, a scoundrel, an' a thief; I got more failings as a man than I got fingers and toes put together. Most things out of my mouth are tricks and lies, but this, Birdie, this is true. I wouldn't 'ave married ye all those years ago if I didn't want to, and I wouldn't be' ere now if I didn't want ye. Yer my own Birdie, girl, and always have been. Ye know that. Ye always 'ave."_

_Her angry face quirked a little at the corner of her mouth. "If yer a liar, how can I be trusting anything ye have to say?"_

_He grinned at her, liking the look of a smile that sharp and hungry face. "I was thinking we wouldn't need to be talking all that much as yet."_

_The other side of her mouth tipped up as well, so she was almost smiling. "That was yer thinking, was it?"_

"_C'mon, Birdie, ease up on me some, why don'cha? Will Turner told me ye wanted me here and so here I came. I'da come sooner if'n I knew ye wanted me. I missed you, girl, damned if I didn't. Didn'cha miss me any at all?"_

_She finally laughed some, not quite the laugh she had as the girl-child she had been; this was a woman's laugh, a woman with a house and a baby and a husband. He figured, listening to it, that it was a laugh he could like. The laugh and the fire in her eyes when she looked at him._

_Birdie pursed her lips some, like she was thinking about kissing, and looked him up and down. He wished he had brought her some pretty bauble or somesuch. Wives liked their little trinkets, didn't they? But her eyes studied his body, worn by the sea and the wind and the sand, and she nodded her head like he pleased her some and said, "Come on in my house, Cap'n Jack. Me and you, we gots some catching up to be doing, don't we now?"_

Will figured he wouldn't be a good friend if he let his imagine go much farther than that. Let Birdie and Jack have their reunion in private. Will wasn't think that Jack would be giving up the sea and his _Pearl_ for his sharp little wife, but he did think Jack might be coming up with some reasons to make berth at Port Royal more often. He wished them well, he did; that was a stormy sea they had sailed before coming to this moment of peace. With a smile, Will drank down the last of his rum and readied himself to go home to his own pretty wife and his own peace. He owed himself a favor or two.

The End


End file.
